This is the statement that had me turn off a video praising Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and stare into the middle distance, contemplating the nature of existence, and how someone could so quickly say something so wrong. It’s an incredible example of the failure of many Gamers™ to critically engage with the media they consume, especially when that media might disagree with their existing views of the world. It’s this notion that entertainment is apolitical, devoid of any deeper meaning, especially if the media is “fun”, or even worse, “funny”. Media that seeks to entertain is value neutral, and any attempt to talk about it otherwise is seen as “reading too much into it”.

This being applied to Metal Gear games is nothing new, but it continues to be disheartening considering just how much the franchise as a whole, and Platinum’s take on it in particular, tries to be political. Overtly political. The game is as subtle as a brick to the teeth, and it has a lot to say. Sometimes the topics it covers are tangential, almost tempting the audience to go investigate the subject on their own. But it has at least a little to say about a lot. Including, but not limited, to the following:

• The proliferation of PMCs

• the military industrial complex

• business interests being used to start armed conflict

• international laws on wartime engagement

• the lack of medical care for soldiers

• Reaganomics

• the war economy

• the use of military technology for civilian applications such as nursing and construction

• The War on Terror

• the exploitation of the poor

• the unwillingness of the “First World” to care about the exploitation of the global poor

• the way the US will use any justification to go to war for oil

• the Iraq War

• the reconstruction of war torn developing nations being exploited by Western powers

• de facto censorship through the use of money and power that leaves the media unable and unwilling to serve as an actual check on that power

• Self-actualization

• Neoliberalism

• the War on Terror

• the reduction of enemy combatants to The Other

• how “Freedom” as a concept is used as an excuse for oppression

• Desert Storm

• the Liberian and Algerian civil wars

• The War on Terror

• child soldiers

• Post 9/11 American domestic and foreign policy as seen through things like the War on Terror…

That’s not even an exhaustive list.

Rising Tensions

Released in 2013 and set in the not too distant year of 2018, four years after the defeat of a global AI network that secretly controlled world (and particularly US) politics, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance focuses on the fallout of that major systemic change. The Patriots (an Illuminati-esque AI) was defeated, but in the end the war still continues. Now state of the art cyborg mercenaries fight each other with high tech samurai swords alongside AI controlled walking tanks and robot dogs. The villains were defeated, but its back to business as usual, and war is pretty good business.

Our hero, a cyborg named Raiden, has seen his fair share of war. Raised as a child soldier, by a man who would go on to become the president of the United States, Raiden grew up reveling in the thrill of violence, but found himself unable to cope with civilian life, until he was unknowingly conscripted to a shadowy government organization run by the Patriots to become their next supersoldier. He defeated his adoptive father in a dramatic sword fight atop Federal Hall, foiling the former president’s terrorist plot to launch a nuke into the atmosphere that would destroy the internet, which I assure you makes complete sense in context. With the defeat of a man who wronged him, and the internet safe (unfortunately), things were looking up for Raiden. Then his girlfriend faked a miscarriage (for reasons I’m not entirely clear on; Guns of the Patriots was a mess), he helped an eastern European resistance group rescue a child from the Illuminati, helped finally launch that nuke into space to kill the internet (unfortunately, only the Illuminati parts), defeating the Patriots for good, after revealing that they were AIs created by the quirky radio support team from the previous game, somehow. At least 2015’s The Phantom Pain would make that mess of a plotline feel reasonable.

By now, Raiden had been captured by the Illuminati and turned into a cyborg ninja, which I’ll be honest doesn’t entirely make sense in context (but its really cool), and he has tactical high heels that can hold a sword for some reason. Finally ready to put the past behind him, and meeting his son for the first time, Raiden became a private security contractor, only to have his traumas return after hunting down the people responsible for murdering an inspiring client uncovers a plot to use the children of third world nations as child soldiers, undergoing the very same process that turned him into a monster who struggles with civilian life. Only the brains, though; it wouldn’t be cyberpunk without a bit of organ theft, and the villains don’t need child bodies, only child brains, put through VR simulations of war, ready to become cyborg soldiers.

It’s a game set twenty minutes into the future where technological advancement and progress have exploded, but mainly for the military. Jacked up cyborgs fight wars for profit, hiring themselves out as mercenaries for any government, resistance, or terrorist group that can afford their servies. War is fought with specially designed anti-materiel swords fitted to vibrate at high frequencies and cut through high resistance tank armour, and the synthetic carbon nanotube flesh of robot dinosaurs and cyborgs alike. The increased militarization and privatization of American police forces means that these heavily augmented soldiers of fortune serve as the law, more than willing to violently beat or murder anyone they deem guilty, all in service of the interests of the shady paramilitary company that employs them, which to be fair isn’t far removed from the public police of today. The twenty minutes into the future it predicted in 2013 is uncomfortably similar to the twenty minutes into the past 2018 that we actually experienced, with armored MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protection) vehicles roaming the streets, and geared up police looking to incite rioting at protests. The only thing Rising doesn’t predict is the overt fascism and white nationalism.

This is the highly politicized world of Metal Gear Rising, a world where real world politics, like the balkanization of Soviet Bloc countries and the economics of war profiteering, exist alongside cyborgs, advanced AI, and the nuclear equipped walking battle tanks that have existed as secret projects since the 70s. It’s a world where the uncomfortable and very real world topic of child soldiers mingles with cutting edge fears of the capitalist rat race forcing literal dehumanization through technology in order to make ends meet in an increasingly advanced world. Though it might not come in the form of the tech savvy hacktivist hero with CRT burned retinas, and a battlestation covered in spare parts and cheeto dust that is more familiar to western audiences, Rising is a cyberpunk story through and through, where real world problems are thrown into an uncertain future ravaged by the contemporary issues of capitalism.

Rising is set in a terrible world, but its still one where things have been winding down. Four years after the “Guns of the Patriots” incident, where a madman, pretending to be possessed by the ghost of a different madman (it makes sense in context but its still ludicrous, just go with it) disabled all of the guns on the planet (and was somehow the villain), the war economy is said to be dying down, even as the flames of global conflict still burn, and Desperado Enforcement, LLC looks to fan those flames.